In 2017 we decided to find some great young people who wanted to create YSI in their country or region. We ended up with fantastic teams who started YSI for Southeast Asia (based in Singapore), Bangladesh, and China.

The programs

Each YSI organization is created from scratch with few resources in each region or country. While collaborating with YSI, using the brand and program structure - the real work lies in building their organizations. Read more about the amazing teams below:

YSI Southeast Asia (SEA)

YSI SEA has the most similar structure, considering that they have people from several countries, therefore being a regional program. In their first iteration, they had 800 applicants from 10 SEA countries, got 40 mentors, and 8 corporate and state partners. They also managed to build a driven team of 20 from scratch in one year. Read more about their mission empower youth in Southeast Asia:

More on YSI SEA

YSI Bangladesh

YSI Bangladesh faces the challenge that innovation, sustainability, and entrepreneurship is quite new and unusual in the country. Despite this, they managed to create a 3-month version of the program, an online opportunity platform, as well as an education platform in their first year. As the pioneers of sustainable development & innovation in their country, they have big plans to reduce the knowledge gap on sustainability challenges, and make impact on the future - read more:

More on YSI Bangladesh

YSI China

With 6 teams, a 3-month program, and a 5-day conference, the China-based YSI team have established partnerships and structures in Shanghai. Government partners and investors are now a part of their network, enabling them to create opportunities for youth. They plan to do more exciting operations in Greater China with their next program.

Local and regional

The new YSI teams were chosen based on where they wanted to create an impact. We ended up with one regional program for South East Asia (SEA), with their base in Singapore. They get applicants from all the countries in SEA.

Bangladesh and China, are programs which is based locally in their countries. Given their sizeable populations (164 million in Bangladesh; 1.2 billion in China), they capture a great deal of youth in their countries to empower their progress and maximize impact.

How are they different from YSI Global?

YSI Global was created in Oslo, Norway, by a bunch of young people driven to create a platform for youth to perform innovation towards the SDGs. To make this happen in other places on planet earth, the same drive is needed, while being put into a local or regional context. Therefore, there are teams who seem similar to the global team, that started the YSI program from scratch. They are part of YSI, but still they make their own way under guidance of YSI Global, with similar structures on key parts of the organization, like the innovation program.

The local chapters have autonomy in terms of making hyper-localized business models, marketing, as well as how they deliver the innovation program to their participants, as they have a better understanding of their local context.

Will there be more programs?

The first programs outside of Norway is also a learning experience we use to ensure great programs in new regions in the years to come. As of November 2018 there are no new regions of the world that has been decided to go forward with, but it will happen - we are just not sure when.

Feel free to contact our country directors directly with any relevant requests